Dig a little and you’ll find photos of me in the bathtub with Ezra Stern.Get your mind out of the gutter. We were six months old.Pry and one of us might confess we saved our first kiss for each other.The most clumsy, wet, sloppy . . . spectacular thirty seconds of my adolescence.Get into our business and you’ll see two families, closer than blood, torn apart in an instant.Twenty years later, my “awkward duckling” best friend from childhood,the boy no one noticed, is a man no one can ignore.

Finer. Fiercer. Smarter.Taken.

Tell me it’s wrong.Tell me the boy who always felt like mine is now the man I can’t have.When we find each other again, everything stands in our way–secrets, lies, promises.But we didn’t come this far to give up now.And I know just the move to make if I want to make him mine.

**QUEEN MOVE will have the special release week price of $3.99. After that, the price will increase.**

“Huh?” Ezra asks absentmindedly, paying more attention to the flame under his pan than to my compliment. “What’d you say?”

“I said you’re brilliant.” I hold up the iPad I’m using to read his manuscript. “Your book, the YLA story, is incredible, Ez.”

“Oh. Thanks.” He flashes me a smile and then goes back to his French toast. “The key to getting this right is the milk-to-bread ratio.”

I hop off the counter and walk over to stand beside him at the stove. “Would you forget about your French toast for a minute and listen to me?”

“But it’s stuffed French toast.” He takes the pan off the burner and pulls me into his arms. “And I could listen to you all day. What were you saying? Something about me being a handsome, sexy genius?”

“Um…those weren’t my exact words.” I laugh up at him.

“I could have sworn that’s what you said, and I’m never wrong.” He slides his hands over my ass in a pair of his boxer shorts. “Some even say I’m fucking brilliant.”

“They probably just like your big dick,” I whisper and blink up at him as innocently as I can manage.

“I get that a lot.” He drops a kiss on my head and turns back to his French toast. I lean down to rest an elbow on the counter and watch him work.

“A lot?” I ask teasingly. “Have there been a lot?”

He pauses mid-toast-flip and slants me a glance. “Are you asking how many people I’ve had sex with?”

“I mean, it’s none of my business. If you don’t want to—”

“Eight.”

Eight?

Lord above, only eight?!

“Oh.” I straighten and rest my hip against the counter. “What a, um, single-digit number that is.”

“What about you?”

What about me? I’m tabulating years of hook-ups, one-night stands, fuck bois and carrying the one.

“If you don’t want to,” he says, cracking an egg into a bowl, “it’s fine. I don’t care how many people—”

“I don’t know.”

He glances up from whisking eggs, a small frown puckering his dark brows. “You don’t know what?”

“My number. I don’t know how many people I’ve been with.”

He resumes whisking, his frown clearing. “Oh.”

The whisking eggs and whirring refrigerator are the only sounds in the kitchen. I’ve never been embarrassed by my choices. I enjoy sex. I’ve had it with a lot of people. People I really liked…or tolerated…but didn’t want to commit to. I’ve always been safe and never mean about it. I was upfront, and when someone wanted more, I let them know “more” wasn’t an option.

“I just never…” I cross my arms over my stomach, fold one bare foot over the other. “I haven’t been interested in committed relationships. There hasn’t been anyone I wanted that with.”

“Tru.” He stops whisking and gives me the full impact of his undivided attention. His eyes are placid blue. No shadows or undercurrents. “I don’t care.” Ezra pushes the bowl aside and faces me. “But there is something I feel like we should be clear on regarding how you’ve handled sex in the past.”

Here we go.

“You’ve never wanted to commit before,” he says.

“Right. I’ve never wanted any strings attached.”

“I know I said we could be just sex, no emotional attachments.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “But I feel like I have to be honest with you. Having you back in my life has been…it’s been exactly what I need, and what I felt last night… I’ve never felt that way before.”

I’m not even sure my heart is beating, but it also feels like there’s a tumult in my chest. “What are you saying, Ez?”

His mouth flattens into a hard line and his jaw hardens to stone. “I want strings.”

“Y-you do?”

“I want strings.” He links our fingers, strokes his thumb across my palm. “Ropes, if necessary. I want anything that keeps you with me and me with you and tells everyone else don’t even think about it.”

I’m stunned and incredibly turned on, but that doesn’t take much where Ezra’s concerned.

“You…you do?” I ask faintly…again.

“I wouldn’t do well sharing you.”

About Kennedy Ryan

RITA® Award Winner, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestseller, Kennedy Ryan writes for women from all walks of life, empowering them and placing them firmly at the center of each story and in charge of their own destinies. Her heroes respect, cherish and lose their minds for the women who capture their hearts

Kennedy and her writings have been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul,USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour and many others. She has always leveraged her journalism background to write for charity and non-profit organizations, but has a special passion for raising Autism awareness.The co-founder of LIFT 4 Autism, an annual charitable book auction, she has appeared on Headline News, The Montel Williams Show, NPR and other media outlets as an advocate for ASD families. She is a wife to her lifetime lover and mother to an extraordinary son.

A RITA® Award Winner and USA Today Bestseller, Kennedy Ryan writes for women from all walks of life, empowering them and placing them firmly at the center of each story and in charge of their own destinies. Her heroes respect, cherish and lose their minds for the women who capture their hearts

Kennedy and her writings have been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul,USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour and many others. She has always leveraged her journalism background to write for charity and non-profit organizations, but has a special passion for raising Autism awareness.The co-founder of LIFT 4 Autism, an annual charitable book auction, she has appeared on Headline News, The Montel Williams Show, NPR and other media outlets as an advocate for ASD families. She is a wife to her lifetime lover and mother to an extraordinary son.

“Combining sweet nostalgia with the important issues Kennedy never shies away from, Queen Move is nothing less than wonderful. I couldn’t put it down and never wanted it to end!”

— Alexa Martin, Author of Intercepted

Queen Move, an all-new powerful second chance standalone from Wall Street Journal bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author Kennedy Ryan, is coming May 26th and we have your FIRST LOOK!

Make sure to enter on Kennedy’s site to win a QUEEN BOX, stuffed with a signed paperback and all the things you’ll need to treat yourself like a queen!

Prologue

Kimba

Two Years Before Present

Is there anything sadder than a daddy’s girl at her father’s funeral?

My mother’s quiet sniffs a few seats down give me the answer.

A grieving widow.

“He was a good man,” someone in the long line of mourners offering condolences whispers to her.

Mama’s head bobs with a tearful nod. In this day and age, she still wears a pillbox hat and veil. It’s black and chic like Mama, channeling tragic Jackie Kennedy or Coretta Scott King. My father was not just a good man. He was a great man, and everyone should know he leaves behind a widow, grieving deeply, but ever-fly. I squeeze the funeral program between my fingers, glaring at the printed words.

Joseph Allen leaves behind a wife, Janetta, three children, Kayla, Keith and Kimba, and six grandchildren.

He leaves behind.

Daddy’s gone, and I don’t know how to live in a world my father does not inhabit. The casket is draped with sweet-smelling flowers in the center of the funeral tent. When we leave the cemetery, it…he will be lowered into the ground with unfathomable finality, separated from us by white satin lining, six feet of dirt and eternity.

Kayla, my older sister, sobs softly at the end of our family’s row. Her four children watch her carefully, probably unused to seeing their unshakeable mother shaken and reduced to tears. Even I’d forgotten how she looks when she cries—like she’s mad at the wetness streaking her cheeks, resentful of any sign of weakness.

It’s not weak to cry, Daddy used to say. It’s human.

“But doesn’t the Bible say even the rocks will cry out?” I’d challenged him when I was young, loving that something from Sunday school took. “So maybe tears aren’t just for humans.”

“You’re getting too smart for your britches, little girl,” he’d said, but the deep affection in his eyes when he kissed me told me he was pleased. He liked that I asked questions and taught me to never accept bullshit at face value.

I miss you, Daddy.

Not even a week since his heart attack, and I already miss him so much.

Humanity blurs my vision, wet and hot and stinging my eyes. I want this to be over. The flowers, the well-dressed mourners, the news cameras stationed at a distance they probably deem respectful. I just want to go to the house where my parents raised us, retreat to Daddy’s study and find the stash of cigars that only he and I knew about.

Don’t tell your mother, he used to whisper conspiratorially. This will be our little secret.

Mama hated the smell of cigars in the house.

“Tru.”

Who would call me by that name? Now, when the only people who use it, my family, are all preoccupied with their own pain? A tall man stands in front of me, his thick, dark brows bunched with sympathy. I don’t know him. I would remember a man like this, who stands strong like an oak tree. A well-tailored suit molds his powerful shoulders. Dark brown, not quite black, hair is cut ruthlessly short, but hints at waves if given the chance to grow. His prominent nose makes itself known above the full, finely sculpted lips below. His eyes are shockingly vivid—so deep a blue they’re almost the color of African violets against skin like bronze bathed in sunlight. No, a man like him you’d never forget. Something niggles at my memory, tugs at my senses. I’d never forget a man who looked like this, a man with eyes like that…but what about a boy?

“Ezra?” I croak, disbelief and uncertainty mingling in the name I haven’t uttered in years.

Get into our business and you’ll see two families, closer than blood, torn apart in an instant.

Twenty years later, my “awkward duckling” best friend from childhood,

the boy no one noticed, is a man no one can ignore.

Finer. Fiercer. Smarter.

Taken.

Tell me it’s wrong.

Tell me the boy who always felt like mine is now the man I can’t have.

When we find each other again, everything stands in our way–secrets, lies, promises.

But we didn’t come this far to give up now.

And I know just the move to make if I want to make him mine.

About Kennedy Ryan

A RITA® Award Winner, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling Author, Kennedy Ryan writes for women from all walks of life, empowering them and placing them firmly at the center of each story and in charge of their own destinies. Her heroes respect, cherish and lose their minds for the women who capture their hearts.

Kennedy and her writings have been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour and many others. She has always leveraged her journalism background to write for charity and non-profit organizations, but has a special passion for raising Autism awareness.The co-founder of LIFT 4 Autism, an annual charitable book auction, she has appeared on Headline News, The Montel Williams Show, NPR and other media outlets as an advocate for ASD families. She is a wife to her lifetime lover and mother to an extraordinary son.

My senior year, I was a first round draft pick with a two-million-dollar signing bonus. Before I could even legally buy myself a beer, I made my Major League debut.

Point is, I was invincible.

Until one day I wasn’t.

After tanking my career—during the World Series, no less—the last thing I want to do is return to my hometown, where every jerk in a ball cap has an opinion about what went wrong with my arm. So when my sister drags me back to town for her wedding, I vow to get in and out of there as quickly as possible.

Then I run into April Sawyer.

In high school we were just friends, but I’d always wanted her, and I’d never forgotten her—the red hair, the incredible smile, the crazy, reckless thing we did in the back of my truck the night we said goodbye. It’s been eighteen years, but one look at her and I feel like my old self again. I can still make her laugh, she can still take me down a notch, and when the chemistry between us explodes, it’s even hotter this time around—and I don’t want it to end.

But just when I think I’m ready to let go of the past and get back in the game, life throws me a curveball I never saw coming.

“Baseball was the only thing I ever did that made my dad proud. Without it, what’s left?”

I swallowed hard. “How about the rest of your life? All the amazing things you’re going to do and be? Maybe you can’t see them yet, but I can.”

He turned around and looked at me. Took my face in his hands. “No one has ever seen me the way you do.”

I smiled. “Maybe no one ever bothered to look beyond the surface—I mean, you’re Tyler Shaw. The surface is pretty nice to look at.”

He kissed me hard then, and deep, his tongue penetrating my lips, his hands sliding into my hair. The kiss grew hotter as he moved me backward toward the bed, shoving his pants down, and lifting me onto the sheets.

“God, April,” he whispered as his mouth traveled down my throat and his hands roamed over my skin. “I want you so much. I want you so much it scares me.”

“Why?” I arched beneath his lips and tongue and teeth and palms and fingers as they moved over my body. I put my hands in his hair.

“Because I keep imagining this life with you, this life full of things I’ve never wanted before.”

“What kinds of things?” As much as I loved his dirty mouth, his sweet words were just as thrilling, and I wanted to hear them all.

“I want to share a bed with you every night. And wake up to you every morning. I want to make breakfast for you, see you in the stands at Central High baseball games, reach all the stuff in the high cupboards in the kitchen. I want to be the one you come home to.”

I smiled. “Don’t be scared. I want all those things too.”

“But what if I fuck it up?” He kissed his way up the center of my chest and braced himself above me. “What if I’m not good at it? What if I don’t deserve it?”

“Tyler.” I took his face in my hands. “You deserve it. Do you hear me? You deserve to be loved the way I’m going to love you.”

Then his mouth was crushing mine and we were pressed chest to chest, rolling sideways with our arms and legs tangled as we tried to get under each other’s skin. He left my side only for the twenty seconds it took to put a condom on, and then he was back, easing into my body. When he was buried deep, he stopped and looked down at me. “I don’t know what the second act of my life is going to look like, but I know you’re the best part of it.”

Tell me again, I wanted to say, even as his mouth possessed mine once more and he began rocking into me with deep, steady strokes. Let me hear those words again, because they meant I didn’t have to be alone anymore. They meant the risk was worth it.

They meant that finally I could say to myself . . . This is what it feels like to fall in love.

About Melanie

USA Today bestselling author Melanie Harlow likes her martinis dry, her heels high, and her history with the naughty bits left in. When she’s not writing or reading, she gets her kicks from TV series like Schitt’s Creek, Homeland, and Fleabag. She occasionally runs three miles, but only so she can have more gin and steak.

Melanie is the author of the CLOVERLEIGH FARMS series, the ONE & ONLY series, AFTER WE FALL series, the HAPPY CRAZY LOVE series, the FRENCHED series, and the sexy historical SPEAK EASY duet, set in the 1920s. She lifts her glass to romance readers and writers from her home near Detroit, MI, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and pet rabbit.

“April and Tyler are just meant to be! I held my breath all the way to the end!” Sarina Bowen, USA Today bestselling author

Unforgettable, an all-new sexy and emotional second chance romance guaranteed to bring all-the-feels from USA Today bestselling author Melanie Harlow, is available now!

Back then, I had it all.

Wicked fastball. Killer instinct. Cocky grin. Full package.

(And believe me, I knew how to score.)

My senior year, I was a first round draft pick with a two-million-dollar signing bonus. Before I could even legally buy myself a beer, I made my Major League debut.

Point is, I was invincible.

Until one day I wasn’t.

After tanking my career—during the World Series, no less—the last thing I want to do is return to my hometown, where every jerk in a ball cap has an opinion about what went wrong with my arm. So when my sister drags me back to town for her wedding, I vow to get in and out of there as quickly as possible.

Then I run into April Sawyer.

In high school we were just friends, but I’d always wanted her, and I’d never forgotten her—the red hair, the incredible smile, the crazy, reckless thing we did in the back of my truck the night we said goodbye. It’s been eighteen years, but one look at her and I feel like my old self again. I can still make her laugh, she can still take me down a notch, and when the chemistry between us explodes, it’s even hotter this time around—and I don’t want it to end.

But just when I think I’m ready to let go of the past and get back in the game, life throws me a curveball I never saw coming.

USA Today bestselling author Melanie Harlow likes her martinis dry, her heels high, and her history with the naughty bits left in. When she’s not writing or reading, she gets her kicks from TV series like Schitt’s Creek, Homeland, and Fleabag. She occasionally runs three miles, but only so she can have more gin and steak.

Melanie is the author of the CLOVERLEIGH FARMS series, the ONE & ONLY series, AFTER WE FALL series, the HAPPY CRAZY LOVE series, the FRENCHED series, and the sexy historical SPEAK EASY duet, set in the 1920s. She lifts her glass to romance readers and writers from her home near Detroit, MI, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and pet rabbit.

“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times–Melanie Harlow is the quintessential romance author.”

— Laurelin Paige, New York Times bestselling author

Unforgettable, an all-new small town second chance romance from USA Today bestselling author Melanie Harlow, is releasing May 4th, and we have the gorgeous cover!

Back then, I had it all.

Wicked fastball. Killer instinct. Cocky grin. Full package.

(And believe me, I knew how to score.)

My senior year, I was a first round draft pick with a two-million-dollar signing bonus. Before I could even legally buy myself a beer, I made my Major League debut.

Point is, I was invincible.

Until one day I wasn’t.

After tanking my career—during the World Series, no less—the last thing I want to do is return to my hometown, where every jerk in a ball cap has an opinion about what went wrong with my arm. So when my sister drags me back to town for her wedding, I vow to get in and out of there as quickly as possible.

Then I run into April Sawyer.

In high school we were just friends, but I’d always wanted her, and I’d never forgotten her—the red hair, the incredible smile, the crazy, reckless thing we did in the back of my truck the night we said goodbye. It’s been eighteen years, but one look at her and I feel like my old self again. I can still make her laugh, she can still take me down a notch, and when the chemistry between us explodes, it’s even hotter this time around—and I don’t want it to end.

But just when I think I’m ready to let go of the past and get back in the game, life throws me a curveball I never saw coming.

USA Today bestselling author Melanie Harlow likes her martinis dry, her heels high, and her history with the naughty bits left in. When she’s not writing or reading, she gets her kicks from TV series like Schitt’s Creek, Homeland, and Fleabag. She occasionally runs three miles, but only so she can have more gin and steak.

Melanie is the author of the CLOVERLEIGH FARMS series, the ONE & ONLY series, AFTER WE FALL series, the HAPPY CRAZY LOVE series, the FRENCHED series, and the sexy historical SPEAK EASY duet, set in the 1920s. She lifts her glass to romance readers and writers from her home near Detroit, MI, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and pet rabbit.

After a week off the grid, I finally get reception and the first voicemail I hear stuns me.“You’re summoned to Baker’s Creek by the late William Tower Alderidge.”Twelve Years.It’s been twelve years since the last time I heard from the Alderidge family.That one voicemail changes everything—I need the money the late William offers.In exchange, I have to live eighteen months in Baker’s Creek.I’ve survived cancer, the jungle, and the plague.This should be easy compared to all that, right?Or so I think until…I see him.Confident, charismatic, bitter, sexy as hell, Doctor Hayes Benjamin Aldrige.My first love, my first kiss—my late husband’s brother.He hates me.He still hasn’t forgiven me for walking out on him, and I can’t blame him. It’s been over ten years, and I still have feelings for him.But I faked it once and I can fake it twice.I can survive eighteen months and that’ll be the last time I see the Alderidge brothers.Isn’t it?

The Baker’s Creek Billionaire Brothers series is a romantic comedy saga packed with the perfect mix of angst, tears, and laughs. If you like strong heroines & alpha males, steamy romances and witty love stories, this series is for you!

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